Open source

In June of 2008, Nokia has announced that it is acquiring full ownership of Symbian to make the operating system open source. Symbian a leading mobile phone operating system in the world is used not only by Nokia mobile phones but by other phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Sharp, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sendo and Sony Ericsson. The decision to take the open source route is one of the biggest if not the biggest open source conversion project. It was a bold move on the part of Nokia. I could just imagine the amount of license agreements that needs to be ironed out in order to open source all of the source code in the mobile operating system.

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Choice is good!? Not that we don’t have a lot of operating system choices these days. Even so, Google has just announced it’s new operating system project — the Google Chrome OS.

According to Google, the new operating system, which is scheduled to be released next year, will focus on netbooks and desktop PC’s. The operating system will be an open source software based on Linux. Google Chrome OS will focus on lightweight, speed, simplicity and security as the driving force in the creation of the operating system. It looks like Google has already been talking to several manufacturers to come up with netbooks using the OS.

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